Zog and the Flying Doctors

"Zog and the Flying Doctors" is the sequel to the hugely popular Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler book "Zog" about a gentle dragon. This time, Princess Pearl is our heroine, trapped in a tower by her father, the King (The Patriarchy), when she reveals her desire to be a doctor. This charming production which has been touring the UK, is on at The Cadogan Hall throughout August. Perfect for little ones age 3 and upwards, it captures the essence of friendship with a dollop of feminism and lots of lovely songs.

The ensemble cast are a joyous bunch with fantastic voices that drive the energy of this simply constructed narrative. Emily Attridge-Cox (Pearl) delivers a stand-out ballad for freedom from the tower and James Stirling is particularly entertaining as the Two-horned unicorn/ disco diva. There are many comic moments from composer and lyricist Joe Stillgoe. and some weird ones – such as watching Gadabout saw off the unicorn’s second horn with his sword. No amount of assurance that it didn’t hurt, made that any less grisly. But it didn’t seem to worry the younger members of the audience!

Set and costumes keep close to the original illustrations and the cast suitably mic’d up to drown out the noise of the rest of the audience. Actually everyone was impressively quiet the morning we went. Of course, the test of a family show is the reaction of the children and my extremely inattentive 4 year old son watched the entire 1hr length show without making a peep, so that’s a win for me. Then I had the pleasure of chasing him down the King’s road afterwards. A perfect family outing.